


Grey

by Lxghts



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-19 23:41:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13134624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lxghts/pseuds/Lxghts
Summary: His face twists into a scowl, “Is this the part where you fail to persuade me to the light again?” He asks in a mocking tone.“I dont need to. I’ve seen it. I see it in you now, Ben. The light pulls you at every chance and all you do is fight it.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> alright but ben solo doe

She hadn't slept since Crait. Hadn't done much of anything. The Resistance and their supplies were so dwindled that rations were being rationed themselves.  
  
Luke’s absence was a tangible void. A hole in the force she didnt notice he once occupied, until it was there, a hollowness she felt each time she meditated. Sometimes she wondered if everyone felt it as strongly as she did. They must have, because what remained of their fleet looked to Rey for guidance and words of encouragement. She knew mumblings of the last Jedi in their midst passed around the camp like fanned embers.  
  
“We will gather supplies and regroup in the Takondanian system. We’ve already established contact with Resistance sympathizers within the airspace.” Poe outlined to the room.  
  
He had a natural leader-like charisma to him, Rey had to admit. People began to respect his word and turn to him for answers.  
  
It was a role he seemed suitable to fill. The burden of responsibility for these people wasnt shifted completely on to her, which she was grateful for. It was selfish, but she didnt ask for any of this.  
  
“The First Order has taken a huge blow as well,” He continues, “Snoke is dead. They lost their biggest fleet. We will have time to rebuild, but so will they” The room buzzes with anxious mumbles.  
  
“We’ll just have to beat them to the punch. Attack while they’re still trying to gather themselves.” He sounds so sure, Rey is almost convinced herself.  
  
“What if we go straight for their new Leadership?” A hidden face chimes in.  
  
“Possible. Kylo Ren is the anchor of the first order. If we kill him, they'll scramble for an heir. Their whole empire could topple.” Someone else she doesn’t recognize calculates.  
  
Rey’s stomach flips, her heart dully pumping blood through her chest. She scans the room and easily finds Leia, sitting with the two remaining generals. Her expression is, for once, completely unreadable.  
  
The energy in the room shifts. Rey surveys the crowd. She has always felt like an observer at these gatherings, rather than part of the discourse. She keeps her hands clasped in front of her, face stoic.  
  
“We should be getting input from the one person capable of defeating a sith lord.”  The first voice replies. Most of the faces in the room turn to look at her.  
  
“I’ll do whatever needs to be done in the name of bringing peace.” She says with care after a few painfully quiet beats. They hang on her every word. It wasnt a lie.  
  
Satisfied enough with her response, they return to strategizing. She feels Leia's eyes on her. Rey doesnt have the strength to stay around and listen any longer.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
She meditates each night. Its the only time she doesnt have to think about her parents, both dead, rotting in a shallow grave. Or coping with the fact that her constant longing for their return had been in vain.  
  
She breathes deeply, feeling everything around her. The salty mist from an ocean miles away, plant life and small animals scuttling around her, the light from the moons illuminating the ground. Something abstracts it for a moment, giving her a sense of vertigo. She opens her eyes immediately alert. Kylo Ren sits there, not five yards away. She scrambles to her feet, reaching for the staff she leaned against a rock. He doesn't so much as turn to look at her.  
  
“It’s peaceful.” Is all he says.  
  
She allows herself to calm marginally, the events of their last encounter still at the forefront of her mind. Her hand hovers near her weapon.  
  
“It was,” she says defensively.  
  
He doesnt respond, just frowns and keeps looking forward into an expanse of dark woods she knows he cant see. Was he talking about her meditative state? He turns to acknowledge her. His eyes are tired, and she feels his exhaustion creep into her own mind. The dark tunic he wears turns his already fair complexion a ghostly pale in the moonlight. Its the youngest he has ever looked to her. She often forgets they are almost the same age.  
  
“Why are you here?” She asks, wishing he wasn’t constantly spurring these conflicting thoughts in her. She thought the bond was erased for good on Crait.  
  
“I don't know.” He sounds just as tired as he looks.  
  
Rey, quick to anger and even quicker to placate, sighs and plops back down on the ground next to him. She makes a point to not look at him as she does.  
  
They sit like that for a while, the air between them buzzing with an uneasy sort of calm- even though they’re worlds away.  
  
When the silence is finally broken, he’s the one who speaks first.  
  
“Luke is dead.” He says plainly. “I feel it.”  
  
Rey bites her lip, a bit too hard. “He became one with the force.”  
  
“That's cute.” He chides, but there’s no venom behind it.  
  
“I'm glad you think so. It just brings you so much joy every time someone in your family suffers, doesnt it?”  
  
“No. When they try to kill me it’s different.” He grinds out.  
  
Rey blanches at that. She wants to argue but feels his sense of betrayal so profoundly, it almost knocks her back. His mind is a jumble of anger and pain, regret, sorrow, fear. It radiates around him.  
  
From what she saw of Luke he seemed quick to react, to judge. She briefly brushed against his mind on Ahch-To and found a brilliant, pure light, but also a small seed of darkness, fear; a drilled determination to not make the same mistake twice. There was likely truth in both of their versions of events.  
  
“He wasnt going to kill you.” She says lamely, although shes not quite sure.  
  
He snaps his head to her, black eyes piercing, “Ah yes, the orphaned apprentice devoted to a dead code and all the liars before who represented it, here to school me. You dont know what happened that night. You wouldnt know!” He sounds dangerous.  
  
“Yeah, cause im nothing, right? A nobody.” She spits back.  
  
He gets a weird look on his face. It starts to drizzle around them. “I didn’t mean it like that.” And this time he’s the one to sigh. The anger drains from him as fast as it had boiled over. “I dont feel like doing this tonight.” And she nods once in silent agreement, thankful for the reprieve.  
  
His mind is such a tumultuous wave of miserable thoughts that it seems to be rubbing off on her. She closes her eyes and calms herself down, practicing her breathing like Luke had taught her to. The droplets of rain coalesce and run down her face, and its the calmest she’s felt in a while. The red blur in her head eventually turns to black, empty space once more, the force thrumming around her gently.  
  
When she finally opens her eyes again, he is gone.  
  
  
  
—

  
  
Her and Leia’s relationship has evolved too fast for Rey to even quantify. There was a language to Leia that not many people spoke. Poe, like her, seemed to have caught on to translating her quirks.For not knowing her long, they both knew she was more reserved after having lost so much to the war and her son. Rey had no idea what it must feel like for her.  
  
They were having dinner in an alcove of their new base, a small room carved out of the mountain. Leia sat quietly, chewing the protein ration but it seemed like it was more out of necessity, not because she was particularly hungry. She offered up a few replies to the conversation Rey tried to keep alive. It reminded her of Ben, and how he tried to shut her out despite the churning thoughts that plagued his mind.  
  
“What was he like? Before all this.” She asks suddenly.  
  
Leia stops chewing and looks straight at her,surprised. Its obviously a question she hadnt been expecting, though Rey knows she had been thinking about her son.  
  
“I’m not sure I even remember properly, it seems so long ago.” Her words are tinged with pain.  
  
She notices Rey’s silent beckon  to continue, because she adds, “Shy. He didnt have many friends. I worried about him constantly. Maybe a bit too much.” She lets out a humorless laugh and continues, “but he was a sweet boy. Fiercely loving, and charming. Like his father.” Her voice cracks, and she pointedly takes a bite of the ration, looking away from Rey once more.  
  
She decides not to push, though theres so much more she wants to know. The woman has so much on her shoulders, Rey doesnt know if she wants to tell her she’s seen the conflict in her son, his eventual return to the light. At this point, Rey’s not even sure of it herself. It could very well have been a image implanted by snoke, intendant on having them tear each other apart. She decides to keep it to herself.  
  
Its hard for Rey to imagine him as a child, as someone with a loving family, practically royalty, someone before the sinister façade of Kylo Ren.  
  
She reaches out to him in the space of her mind and feels nothing.

  
  
  
—

  
  
Weeks pass, and Rey continues to practice her forms, study, train. Each morning she hikes to the top of their base, an outcropping of craggy rock and low growing moss. It reminds her of Ahch-To, and helps her channel her strength from there. Its one of the higher points in the region, and from the top she can see for miles. The distant sea shimmers with the rising sun.  
  
She sits, cross-legged and tosses her duffle next to her, taking a deep breath in. When she opens her eyes, she sees him, standing not too far away, his back turned to her, hands behind him. He is talking with other people she cannot see or hear. When his conversation stops he must sense her suddenly, because he startles and turns to look at her, eyes narrowing.  
  
“You.” He huffs.  
  
He surveys her quietly for a moment, several feet away but still looming over her like an oppressive shadow.  
  
“Are you doing this?” He’s agitated.  
  
She shifts from her spot on the rock. “No.”  
  
“How do we make it stop?” He asks himself, meant to be more rhetorical than anything.  
  
She frowns, “By all means, I'm open to suggestion.”  
  
He shifts uncomfortably as she observes him, opening his mouth to say something but she cuts him off.  
  
“What were you doing, just now?” She asks, deliberately trying to shift the mood. If they are going to have recurring visits like this for however long, she doesn’t have the energy to bicker each time.  
  
He’s caught off guard by the sudden question.   
  
“What did you hear?” His voice is cold.  
  
She gestures dismissively, “Nothing, just curious.”  
  
He seems to sense the truth in that, because he allows himself to deflate. “It doesnt concern you.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
They stay like that for a while, stuck in an awkward limbo of enemies at an impasse. Shes not sure what to say next, or if she should even bother. She remembers what Leia had told her about his shyness, what little friends he had. He’s an inherently lonely person, which is also easy to gather just from looking at him.  It may be the one thing they have in common.  
  
Its such a strange thing, to be here, on the resistance base in Takondana with him standing next to her. If circumstances were different, he could _actually_ be here, with her and his mother and chewie. She shuts the thought out as soon as it appears, hoping that he hadnt sensed it. No. He made his choice painfully clear.  
  
He must have seen a glimpse of it anyway, because his face twists into a scowl “Is this the part where you fail to persuade me to the light again?” He asks in a mocking tone.  
  
“I dont need to. I’ve seen it. I see it in you now, Ben. The light pulls you at every chance and all you do is fight it.” She says matter of factly.  
  
“You know _nothing_ about me,” He spits, “You think you’re so virtuous. I killed Snoke, offered you everything I had, and you tried to kill me!” The words sting like they’re meant to, even if they shouldn’t. He is such a broken man.  
  
“Don’t act like Snokes death wasnt for your own accord! You gave me an ultimatum you knew I couldn’t accept. And get over your self pity. If everyone wants to kill you, how about you take a hard look at yourself instead of desperately searching for someone to blame each time.”  
  
“What did I do to deserve what _he_ did to me? My own kin, attempting to strike me down while I slept. I was young and lost, and everyone in my life turned me away.” He is breaking, right there before her. It should give her a sense of satisfaction. This is Kylo Ren, a man who has destroyed peaceful systems, murdered his own father, but finally seeing it unfold does nothing. Her heart aches to reach out to him. To comfort him.  
  
“You didnt deserve that.” She agrees, “Just come home. Leia wants you back.”  
  
Its the wrong thing to say, in the moment. His face twists awfully, and his eyes well up.  
  
“I have no home.” He says.  
  
Its right then that he begins to fade in front of her.  
  
There is so much more she wants to say in that moment, before its lost in between the time that they will see each other again. _Please, Ben. Just choose the right path. Its not too late._  
  
But the words never leave her lips.  
  
He disappears in front of her. They are surely entire planet systems away. She floats through the rest of the day, thinking about a young man, afraid and alone.  
  
When she sleeps that night, she doesnt dream of anything.  
  
  
—  
  
  
  
“We’ve gotten word of an arranged arms deal between Canto Bight and the First Order.” Finn announces to the gathered Resistance. Hes been tasked with leading a new league of spies against the Order. His knowledge of their infrastructure seems to have worked well so far.  
  
“They regularly make deals, but our source confirmed this one is important. Whatever the Order is planning, it's big.” A few soldiers whisper nervously amongst themselves.  
  
Rey listens from her usual spot in the back of the room, carefully surveying people in the crowd.  
  
“We have it on good authority that Supreme Leader Kylo Ren and his Knights will be there to see through that the deal is made.”  
  
_Stars Ben, what are you getting yourself into?_ She hadnt seen him again since that day several weeks ago.  
  
She knew where this was going.  
  
“We strike then, and we have an opportunity to end this.” Finn announces. She loves her friend dearly, but his words only add to the conflict tearing at her heart. She knows how deeply and personally Ben has hurt each and every one of them. Poe, Finn, Leia, the rest of the fighters in the room have all lost so much to the First Order. She knows most everyone wants him dead. Everyone except for Leia, and her, it seems.  
  
“Poe will command our skies while we drop Rey, accompanied by a few of our strongest fighters.” The growing optimism in the room is palpable. The last remaining Jedi is finally going to defeat the dark side, just as they have done countless times throughout the galaxy’s history.  
  
They expect her to kill Ben Solo. Something she couldn’t accomplish even when she hated him.


	2. Chapter 2

It doesn’t happen enough for her to definitively draw the conclusion, but he appears-once again-while she meditates. She doesn’t even need to open her eyes. His energy swirls around her, contempt, resentment, frustration. The anger is red hot and festering on the edge of her mind.

“Hi, Ben” she says calmly.

“This, again.” He sighs.

When she opens her eyes, his are closed, and he is sitting in a pose similar to hers. It looks as if he had been trying to meditate as well. Or whatever he considers.

“Mimicking me?” She jabs lightly.

“Yeah well, thought I’d test out a new coping method.”

“Wont work.” She snorts.

He bites, cautious, “Why is that?”

Her concentration is now broken. She sits up fully and he follows suit.

“Too much going on up here.”

She gestures to his head, mimicking the swirling of his thoughts.

He chuckles mirthlessly and looks down, picking up a smooth pebble and holding it in his palm.

“I think you might be right for once, Rey.”

She ignores his backhanded comment and snags on the way he says her name.

He looks so impossibly young. Nothing like all the images of Sith she had seen, or heard of. Their empty eyes and dark souls. The all-consuming power. Their bodies simply vessels for the dark energy that coursed through them. She supposes he wouldn’t fall in that category anyway. The sith had superiors giving them orders. Weapons to be aimed with their masters pulling the trigger. What excuse does he have? He could end this war, he wanted to when he asked for her hand. But he pushes forward with the Order’s plans to exterminate the Resistance.

Now, he sits here with her, talking with his sworn enemy conversationally as if this bond wasn’t against both their wills. The duality of his actions frightens her more than anything. If she tries to delve too deep into his true motives, she’d surely be there for weeks.

She focuses on the scar she gave him, how it unevenly bisects his features. It snakes down the side of his throat, and she knows it ends somewhere on his chest. She doesn’t feel bad, he had deserved much worse at the time, but something in her aches to see him wear it regardless.

He notices her staring, and his eyes raise to meet hers.

Thats when she sees it again, clearer than ever.

His soul betrays what his mind has convinced himself to be true. She knows, now more solidly than before, that Ben Solo will never rid himself of the light he still has inside him. Its powerful, and beautiful. She can see it, even without holding on to him. A candle flame that nips at the never-ending dark, uncaring of its impossible odds. She sees more- glimpses of Han, its impossible to tell for sure but it must be him. He looks down at Ben with that sidelong grin and says something lost to the static of the memory. There are flashes of a lot of other people she doesn’t recognize. Faces from another lifetime. She belatedly wonders how many of them are still alive today.

The memories get more skewed, the mixed fabric of Resistance garb warps into straight lapels and pressed uniforms of nameless Order Commandants, their features grossly twisted into snarls and people yelling distantly. There is destruction she had seen firsthand, but now from a new angle. They both watch in horror as the Hosnian System explodes. He is grateful for the mask on that day. The entire viewport room is flooded with the beams bright red light that stains his vision even after he leaves.

Finally, she sees herself, enjoying the rain on Ahch-To. Her hand reaches out to the edge of the Falcon where water spills over, and it pools in her hand quickly before she lets it splash to the ground, smile bright on her face. She didn’t know he had seen this, or why he was so keen on remembering it.

She’s shoved painfully through the force. It knocks the breath out of her like the time her cable snapped while rappelling down a freight ship in Jakku. She takes a gasping breath and snaps back to herself, only to find he has moved closer and stands over her.

“If you ever go into my mind again,” he starts to threaten. So many people have hurt him, and he in turn has hurt so many others. If she doesn’t say something now and the connection fades-

“They’re going to try to kill you.” She blurts.

He blinks. “What?”

“The Resistance.”

He curses and turns away from her, hunching in on himself. She cant see his thoughts, he shut her out completely. But she is sure he has had plenty of attempts on his life before. Kylo Ren is no stranger to death threats. He turns back to face her.

“So they’re sending you to do it, then.” He determines, “Why?”

“Really, you’re asking me that?”

He might be blind to a lot of things but she knew he wasn’t stupid. Eradicating the leader of the First Order meant an end to their decade-long war.

He looks confused, briefly, before the realization must dawn and he corrects himself. “No, I know why, ” A pause, “Why are you telling me?”

This time it’s her turn to balk at his question.

“I- I’m not sure.”

“Liar.”

And she feels it in him, no matter how he tries to hide it from her. This is important. Her answer to this means something significant to both of them.

“I dont want to hurt you, Ben.” She finally admits. “Not anymore.” It leaves her mouth like a confession. It is one, the dynamic between them had shifted into something else a while ago, but only now they are beginning to reconcile with it.

He stares at her, perhaps trying to search her mind for deception, anything to tip him off that she was lying about this too. But he doesn’t barge into her thoughts or rip through her for intel like he had on Starkiller. He studies her face hard. He eventually finds whatever it is that he’s looking for because he nods once. That’s that.

At the same time he must become aware of his closeness to her, and the lack of reason for it now. He lingers, awkward and unsure of where to go. She laughs at the sight. Take his anger away, and he’s nothing more than a tall, anxious young man.

He freezes when she offers her hand.

“Help me up.”

He tries his best to project a cool disinterest, but eventually pulls her to her feet. His hand is warm, and envelopes hers fully. She grabs her duffle and begins the trek back down to the camp. They walk side by side.

He is somewhere on his ship, several million clicks away. But right now they are both on Takodana.

She thinks about what Finn would say, or how anyone in the resistance would react to their young Jedi knight, taking a stroll in the presence of the First Order’s Supreme Leader. Its almost enough to laugh at, but the fact that she enjoys his company scares her too much to find grim satisfaction in any of it.

“What are we doing?” He asks, as if he expects her to know any more than he does.

“I don’t know.”

They both welcome the silence that follows until they fade away from each other once again.

 

—

 

“I need to talk to Leia. Alone.”

The General and Poe both look up at the Jedi who has just barged into the room while they are in the middle of outlining an attack strategy. The hologram they stand in front of hums loudly.

Rey composes herself, “Sorry. Hi Poe.”

He looks to Leia, waiting for her word. She shrugs at him.

“Can this wait?”

“I don’t think so.” Rey says, itching desperately to talk to someone she can trust about this.

Leia acquiesces with a bow of her head and whispers to Poe, who looks at Rey a bit too suspiciously for her comfort but leaves the room anyway.

Once she hears the click of the door being shut she walks over to Leia and stands next to her, now unable to find the right words to say. Her hands grip the table so tightly her knuckles turn white.

“What is it?” She knows Leia can see the turmoil written on her face.

“I can’t do it.” She says, thinking only of Ben’s eyes, the warmth she felt between them before he faded away again.

“What?” Leia asks.

“We’re connected through the force. I talk to him. I see his thoughts.”

Leia says nothing.

“I can’t go on this mission.” Rey says. At some point her nerves broke through, because she catches her lip quivering. She bites it to make it stop, trying not to think about the resistance sending her with a kill order.

“My son,” she clarifies slowly.

Rey nods.

Leia processes this, clearly stunned. She would’ve probably preferred to not hear that the lone Jedi in the Resistance had been communicating with her child, whom she was planning an attack against one week from now.

“Have we been compromised?” She asks. It is war, after all. She has people to protect.

“No. We can’t see where the other is. I haven’t told him any of our plans”

A small lie. He knew they were planning an attack on him. He didn’t know when or where.

“You think you can bring my boy home?” She asks finally, and it breaks Rey’s heart the way it sounds so reluctantly hopeful.

“I don’t know if he would ever come with me anywhere,” She says, “But I see the light in him. He is so conflicted, Leia.”

She thinks about the absurdity of it all, that she is pleading Ben’s case to his own mother, someone who should know him better than her by all means.

“I know you don’t want him to die, and I can’t kill him with a clean conscious. I won’t be able to. More of our men will die in vain.”

The woman steadies herself on the table and takes a seat. Its clearly too much for her to hear. She feels terrible. General Organa has already grieved for a son she thought was gone.

It makes her more angry at Ben.

“I’ll call off the attack.” She croaks, and she takes Rey’s hand in hers.

It’s exactly what she wanted to hear, but it does little to bring Rey any solace. The Resistance will lose another foothold this week. They are still at war, and her weakness has lost them this. She prays its the right call.

 

—

 

A barrage of angry knocks assault her door an hour later.

“What was that about?” Poe asks right as she opens it, his tone accusatory.

Rey stands in the doorway, crossing her arms.

“Don’t do that, Rey. Leia was hellbent on this plan, you barge in there and 20 minutes later she calls off the entire thing?”

She says nothing, partly because she doesn’t owe him any explanation, but also because even if she could answer, there are no words that can excuse it into something reasonable.

“What did you say to her?”

“You’re a good leader, Poe.” and he is, in every way that she is not. “You’ll just have to trust that it was the right thing to do.”

Before he has the time to respond she shuts the door once more. She didnt realize she had been holding her breath until she exhales into the empty room.


End file.
